I am absolutely not wrong about the sequence of dungeons. ABSOLUTELY NOT. I'm not saying that you needed to clear Karazhan before heroics, but heroic shattered halls, or heroic shadow labs, you definitely wanted to have some parts karazhan gear. No contest.

tBC had the highest subs, wotlk went down, cata went further down.

Zul aman wasn't nerfed until the last patch before the expansion. Before that nerf, you couldn't "just" jump into ZA.

You are wrong sir,

WOTLK had the highest subs do a google search and find out. the sequence was wrong, I did shattered halls and shadow labs in blues FYI. Kara gear would not hurt but you out geared it by then which defeats the sequence. You are flatly wrong on it. ZA we had blue geared alts going into it and clearing it. You really could get into it (but doing the timed run was another matter) You really need to learn that because you may have not been able to do it doesnt mean it wasnt easily doable.

If you wanna be HC go do challenge modes for Gold Medal, only when you get those you can whine how easy everything is.

Don't need to, I played Vanilla. As a tank.

Originally Posted by khalltusk

You are wrong sir,

the sequence was wrong, I did shattered halls and shadow labs in blues FYI. Kara gear would not hurt but you out geared it by then which defeats the sequence. You are flatly wrong on it. ZA we had blue geared alts going into it and clearing it. You really could get into it (but doing the timed run was another matter) You really need to learn that because you may have not been able to do it doesnt mean it wasnt easily doable.

It's not my opinion. It's concensus. I cleared Both in full dungeon blue, as a tank, but that doesn't mean that KZ wasn't easier than most heroics.

With adding a boss or two for heroic only per tier thats ADDING content to the game and even if you nerf the content later on in the patch cycle (when the best guilds have had it on farm for a long time and everyone else is struggling) I see no problem with this. It doesnt affect my progression never has.

That's one of the benefits of linear raiding, you don't have to actively nerf current top end content as the old content isn't invalidated by the new, you can choose to leave it or as I said earlier apply a buff to help some stuck players along once there is new content for those that already beat the old, no one is hurt by that process and no one gets left to far behind if done right, it would also help make players work at being better instead of just waiting for hand holding.

I do agree alyssa, if they used a system such as that where they either nerfed fights that were too highly tuned or gave a buff to players to help them through once the contents out long enough and under farm by the bigger/best guilds around then I see no issue with it. They can keep the heroic dungeon releases that provide some upgrades to the previous dungeon gear and sit somewhere between the last raids gear and under the new raids gear thats also great.

The current linear tier in mop seems a good step in that direction if they implement the next tier with the requirement to kill the last boss of terrace and adjust the encounter as time goes buy and provide the upgrade routes outside of raiding this could be a win win situation.

Well they said that they were going to, but they didn't. Instead we got the LFR tool, which was a massive step in the opposite direction, and more normal/hard mode encounters, which the 'hardcore' raiders don't want. In reality the rot had set in during WotLK, people could feel the changes and combined with more and more decent MMOs appearing, people began leaving.

Seriously? LFR? LFR was the reason why the bleed stopped, they launched LFR BECAUSE the catering to TBC people FAILED.

T11 was a challenging tier, both Cata heroic 5 mand and ZA/ZG were challenging, not TBC challenging but more than Wrath.

Its in the middle of Firelands, after near 2 millon subs loss that they suddenly change direction, with Firelands across the board nerfs and then DS difficulty, with easy 5 mans and LFR.

I am absolutely not wrong about the sequence of dungeons. ABSOLUTELY NOT. I'm not saying that you needed to clear Karazhan before heroics, but heroic shattered halls, or heroic shadow labs, you definitely wanted to have some parts karazhan gear. No contest.

tBC had the highest subs, wotlk went down, cata went further down.

Zul aman wasn't nerfed until the last patch before the expansion. Before that nerf, you couldn't "just" jump into ZA.

I'm going to have to jump on this. Some Kara gear was definitely useful for H. Arcatraz or H. Shattered Halls, but that's really the only point I agree on. Zul'Aman wasn't difficult, even before the nerf. Roughly a month or two after ZA released (definitely before nerfs) I rerolled on a different server, got level cap, was in mostly blues with a few epics from heroic 5-mans and I tanked ZA no problem with a guild of casual players.

Your progression is off too though. I think you have the wrong ideas about it. If you're talking about before they removed attunements, as a group, then yes raidwise you had to progress that way. Not because the content couldn't be done without a full set of gear from the previous tier, but because the attunements required you to do things in a certain order. After attunements were lifted? Not so much. At that point groups in Kara/ZA/Heroic gear were killing bosses in Hyjal/BT and I think one or two in SWP as well.

Attunements served to make content last longer than it should have, and the only real impact it had on players was a negative one because if anyone wanted to switch mains, either due to a desire to or due to the guild needing their alt, it was a seriously major pain in the ass for the entire raid team. Either a night of progression raiding was lost to do it, or people had to be on an extra night for at least that week just to get one guy's alt attuned. We did it though, if we really needed that person's alt class, and then we had to carry that person for a couple weeks in the current content until they caught up on gear from the current content. As a raider at the time, I was glad to see attunements go. Those were such a pain in the ass.

It's not my opinion. It's concensus. I cleared Both in full dungeon blue, as a tank, but that doesn't mean that KZ wasn't easier than most heroics.

Concensus hardly give me a source if you are so sure. Kara had far harder boss fights than shattered halls and shadowlabs. the _ONLY_ hard things in there were the trash packs. I have no idea why you think otherwise.

---------- Post added 2012-10-05 at 01:51 PM ----------

Originally Posted by RoKPaNda

I'm going to have to jump on this. Some Kara gear was definitely useful for H. Arcatraz or H. Shattered Halls, but that's really the only point I agree on. Zul'Aman wasn't difficult, even before the nerf. Roughly a month or two after ZA released (definitely before nerfs) I rerolled on a different server, got level cap, was in mostly blues with a few epics from heroic 5-mans and I tanked ZA no problem with a guild of casual players.

Your progression is off too though. I think you have the wrong ideas about it. If you're talking about before they removed attunements, as a group, then yes raidwise you had to progress that way. Not because the content couldn't be done without a full set of gear from the previous tier, but because the attunements required you to do things in a certain order. After attunements were lifted? Not so much. At that point groups in Kara/ZA/Heroic gear were killing bosses in Hyjal/BT and I think one or two in SWP as well.

Attunements served to make content last longer than it should have, and the only real impact it had on players was a negative one because if anyone wanted to switch mains, either due to a desire to or due to the guild needing their alt, it was a seriously major pain in the ass for the entire raid team. Either a night of progression raiding was lost to do it, or people had to be on an extra night for at least that week just to get one guy's alt attuned. We did it though, if we really needed that person's alt class, and then we had to carry that person for a couple weeks in the current content until they caught up on gear from the current content. As a raider at the time, I was glad to see attunements go. Those were such a pain in the ass.

Thank you I thought I was going mad. but at least someone else knows what I am talking about!

What's the point in it then? No one will run around looking at your achievement dates, as such it becomes less rewarding to try and accomplish things in the game same as it provides less motivation to try and beat it when all you need to do is wait for the nerfs, personally I think that is a big contributor to the subscription loss, people simply ask them self why bother to make the effort and as a consequence of that start to question why they subscribe in the first place.

So you raid in order to then go to SW/Org and show off your shinies to other people and that's how you feel special?

No, those time where gear is unreachable to most people wont come again

Unfortunately I don't think we will ever see tBC or Wrath release through Ulduar level of fun/difficulty ever again. Why? The vocal minority, as displayed in this very forum. The people who enjoyed Wrath/tBC and the difficulty, the vast amount of content, the drive to play to get to that elite tier - will probably never be in WoW again, but we can hope for another game to be released to mimick it.

Its funny because the same people who complain in this thread "no, the days of people not seeing content thats stupid" & "Ew that grind sucked thank God I won't ever have to do that again" ; are more often then not the same people who complain because they cleared cata, ICC, etc. way too fast and now complain nonstop about not enough content.

Don't be fooled, the highest sub times when Blizzard was rolling in the dough was mid/late tBC and early Wrath, you can counter argue anything you want here, but facts are facts. THE MOST PEOPLE PLAYED WoW DURING TBC AND EARLY WRATH - evidence that while the vocal minority here will say it wasn't fun, really the most people enjoyed that style of the game.

Unfortunately I don't think we will ever see tBC or Wrath release through Ulduar level of fun/difficulty ever again. Why? The vocal minority, as displayed in this very forum. The people who enjoyed Wrath/tBC and the difficulty, the vast amount of content, the drive to play to get to that elite tier - will probably never be in WoW again, but we can hope for another game to be released to mimick it.

Its funny because the same people who complain in this thread "no, the days of people not seeing content thats stupid" & "Ew that grind sucked thank God I won't ever have to do that again" ; are more often then not the same people who complain because they cleared cata, ICC, etc. way too fast and now complain nonstop about not enough content.

Don't be fooled, the highest sub times when Blizzard was rolling in the dough was mid/late tBC and early Wrath, you can counter argue anything you want here, but facts are facts. THE MOST PEOPLE PLAYED WoW DURING TBC AND EARLY WRATH - evidence that while the vocal minority here will say it wasn't fun, really the most people enjoyed that style of the game.

the other way around im afraid buddy. The vocal minority is what landed us with CATAs early raids and dungeons. Theres multiple blue sources on this. Early wrath was a success due to its fluid questing plenty of content to do and ease of which people could slip into heroics. things like totc25 and the huge 1 year gap between icc and cata caused a decline in subs. Cata then bumped this up at launch and NOSE dived as it was more following the TBC early model of REALLY tough content. hence they turn around mid firelands and into DS.

Mop appears to try and balance this.

I'm glad some grinds are out of the game, namely whiper root tubers in felwood. attunement grinding on alts/new guild members (I liked doing an attunement 1st time round) The game still has plenty of grinds in it as thats what MMO do they give grinds to keep you playing.

I am going to bite on this one though I feel I shouldn't really have to. If you want a personal challenge then don't use LFR, it is optional after all. I think you and I have very different memories of what BC was I was a raider in a half assed guild on a low population server. We had a few good players and a lot of bad ones. Everytime we started to actually progress in TK or SSC BAM we lost 2 people and had to find replacements. That meant running nothing but Kara over and over for several weeks to ensure everyone was fully geared and we would go back into progression mode and BAM again we lose 2 people. Now, I realize people on a high population server can make outrageous requirements for entry into a guild but what happens when no one meets those expectations? You lower them until you can find people to fill those spots and when you have a limited pool of possible people that means sometimes you have to scrape the bottom of the barrel. I love LFR I don't have time to commit to a steady raid group, and my server doesn't pug. I'm not xferring off either so LFR allows me to quickly see the content and be on my way with no commitment to anyone else. I hope we never see a BC style expansion again because to people like me this would be taking 2 steps back.

I have very different memories then you, I for one could still to this day be farming Kara over and over again as I did for all of TBC. I is still the only raid that I can do that with to this day.

the other way around im afraid buddy. The vocal minority is what landed us with CATAs early raids and dungeons. Theres multiple blue sources on this. Early wrath was a success due to its fluid questing plenty of content to do and ease of which people could slip into heroics. things like totc25 and the huge 1 year gap between icc and cata caused a decline in subs. Cata then bumped this up at launch and NOSE dived as it was more following the TBC early model of REALLY tough content. hence they turn around mid firelands and into DS.

Mop appears to try and balance this.

I'm glad some grinds are out of the game, namely whiper root tubers in felwood. attunement grinding on alts/new guild members (I liked doing an attunement 1st time round) The game still has plenty of grinds in it as thats what MMO do they give grinds to keep you playing.

The increased difficulty of Cata heroics not going over well was directly due to WotLK heroics being very easy. A lot of players that joined during Wrath expected that was what a heroic should be - they never experienced Magister's Terrace or fucking Arcatraz.

The increased difficulty of Cata heroics not going over well was directly due to WotLK heroics being very easy. A lot of players that joined during Wrath expected that was what a heroic should be - they never experienced Magister's Terrace or fucking Arcatraz.

This is the point the player base reacted badly to the difficulty in content and it affected subs. I loved it as i was doing all of the heroics with a set group. same with the 10man raiding we were doing. The difficulty was fantastic. But for the general player base I can see how it'd impact it. Challenge modes I feel bring us that middle ground.

So you raid in order to then go to SW/Org and show off your shinies to other people and that's how you feel special?

Never said that, I raid for a challenge and the fun of doing it, without any recognition for excelling at the game there is little point though, or do you think athletes would train as hard if there was no recognition for being good for example.

Originally Posted by Crashdummy

No, those time where gear is unreachable to most people wont come again

You misunderstand me, I'm not trying to deny anyone content for the time/commitment they want to put in to the game which is why I say Blizzard should add more content types that cater to the various amounts of player types instead of pushing everyone towards raiding. Also, wanting rewards that shows of your accomplishments has nothing to do with making it unreachable to most people, everyone have the same opportunity to get the top end rewards, if they choose to go for them or not is up to them. Giving the special rewards to everyone makes them not be special any more, for rewards to be special there has to be limited supply.

Not nerfing heroics would solve a lot of the issues I have with the current way raiding is being done, something you agreed with.

The game still has plenty of grinds in it as thats what MMO do they give grinds to keep you playing.

Not really, Winsterspring trainers or Furbolg rep now those where grinds, todays WoW doesn't even come close to have grinds, the word grind is misused and applied to everything that requires any amount of effort.

Artificial gating is one of the worst designs ever used in a MMO, that's all I'm going to say about that.

The linear progression used in BC still gave you more content, or at least content for longer periods of time unless you belonged to the top 5%, the shortcomings of how it used to work in BC could easily be solved within todays WoW hence be beneficial to most players, only once benefited by the current raid system are people who want to clear it once in LFR and then never go back and people wanting loot for no effort, everyone else lose out in one way or another.

Funny that you say that, i thought people in your group of thought said SWP was one of the best raids ever, and ti had artificial gating.

Artificial gating is the only way to stop top players from consuming everything in 2 weeks. You cant design a Ragnaros Heroic all the time and Spine type of gating is probably even worse than artificial one.

TBC gave more content only to a very little amount of people (those that reached SWP). Current model gives more content to most people.

Current model is WAY, WAY better than TBC one. Its not perfect and needs improvement, but its light years ahead of TBC one.

---------- Post added 2012-10-05 at 10:46 AM ----------

Originally Posted by khalltusk

I do agree alyssa, if they used a system such as that where they either nerfed fights that were too highly tuned or gave a buff to players to help them through once the contents out long enough and under farm by the bigger/best guilds around then I see no issue with it. They can keep the heroic dungeon releases that provide some upgrades to the previous dungeon gear and sit somewhere between the last raids gear and under the new raids gear thats also great.

The current linear tier in mop seems a good step in that direction if they implement the next tier with the requirement to kill the last boss of terrace and adjust the encounter as time goes buy and provide the upgrade routes outside of raiding this could be a win win situation.

That would be a huge mistake. Forcing players to do old content to get into new one IS NOT a good design. TBC tiered progression was a HUGE failure, so much it failed that it was changed IN THE VERY SAME EXPANSION.

Stop asking for the biggest failed feature EVER in the history of WoW.

Never said that, I raid for a challenge and the fun of doing it, without any recognition for excelling at the game there is little point though, or do you think athletes would train as hard if there was no recognition for being good for example.

You misunderstand me, I'm not trying to deny anyone content for the time/commitment they want to put in to the game which is why I say Blizzard should add more content types that cater to the various amounts of player types instead of pushing everyone towards raiding. Also, wanting rewards that shows of your accomplishments has nothing to do with making it unreachable to most people, everyone have the same opportunity to get the top end rewards, if they choose to go for them or not is up to them. Giving the special rewards to everyone makes them not be special any more, for rewards to be special there has to be limited supply.

Not nerfing heroics would solve a lot of the issues I have with the current way raiding is being done, something you agreed with.

---------- Post added 2012-10-05 at 01:38 PM ----------

Easy to solve now when they can account bind things.

Not really, Winsterspring trainers or Furbolg rep now those where grinds, todays WoW doesn't even come close to have grinds, the word grind is misused and applied to everything that requires any amount of effort.

dont ever quote me on furbolgs or winterspring! :P I had to help my mate get exalted it was a nightmare. my grinding was mainly for raid items, whipper root tubers and mana pots being a resto shaman it was nightmare if i got jumped by someone else wanting the same materials!

I agree with account bound attunements, they could potentially put out a testing quest for attunement and see how the player base deals with it. if its a positive thing then i could see it being expanded.

Unfortunately I don't think we will ever see tBC or Wrath release through Ulduar level of fun/difficulty ever again. Why? The vocal minority, as displayed in this very forum. The people who enjoyed Wrath/tBC and the difficulty, the vast amount of content, the drive to play to get to that elite tier - will probably never be in WoW again, but we can hope for another game to be released to mimick it.

Its funny because the same people who complain in this thread "no, the days of people not seeing content thats stupid" & "Ew that grind sucked thank God I won't ever have to do that again" ; are more often then not the same people who complain because they cleared cata, ICC, etc. way too fast and now complain nonstop about not enough content.

Don't be fooled, the highest sub times when Blizzard was rolling in the dough was mid/late tBC and early Wrath, you can counter argue anything you want here, but facts are facts. THE MOST PEOPLE PLAYED WoW DURING TBC AND EARLY WRATH - evidence that while the vocal minority here will say it wasn't fun, really the most people enjoyed that style of the game.

Hihgest sub number were during Wrath, which KEPT those subs. And Wrath was not aimed to the hardcore minority like TBC have been.

The reality if that WoW in general HAS ALWAYS BEEN AIMED TO CASUALS, and every expansion launched was more casual friendly than the previous one, witht he exception of the start of Cataclysm being less casual friendly than Wrath, leading to the MASSIVE FAILURE and HUGE SUB DROPPED caused by it.

So no, you are wrong in so many ways that is funny you dont notice it.

---------- Post added 2012-10-05 at 10:53 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Alyssa

Never said that, I raid for a challenge and the fun of doing it, without any recognition for excelling at the game there is little point though, or do you think athletes would train as hard if there was no recognition for being good for example.

If you raid for challenge and fun, why is recognition a problem if you get challenge and fun?

Athletes would still train as hard without the recognition as long as they get paid and get the sattisfaction of being the best, but real life comparison like these are bad because you cant compare them as easily as you try.

Funny that you say that, i thought people in your group of thought said SWP was one of the best raids ever, and ti had artificial gating.

I never ever said artificial gating was good, not even in BC, it's a horrible design period. However it's use doesn't invalidate peoples enjoyment of SWP nor any other instance it's used in.

Originally Posted by Crashdummy

Artificial gating is the only way to stop top players from consuming everything in 2 weeks. You cant design a Ragnaros Heroic all the time and Spine type of gating is probably even worse than artificial one.

The effects are the same, if you clear it in 2 weeks and wait for new content or if you wait between the gating, the people clearing it that fast will wait the same amount of time no matter what. Personally I like spine like gating, even if spine was a bit excessive, gear-check bosses are great as they give you a reason to farm a raid for enough gear to be able to overcome that roadblock.

Originally Posted by Crashdummy

TBC gave more content only to a very little amount of people (those that reached SWP). Current model gives more content to most people.

TBC raid boss count is 44 + 8 (SWP)

Cataclysm raid boss count is 32 + 3 (BH)

Even if you never reached SWP you still had more content and your progression was never reset during during the expansion, your goal was still there, the gear you acquired was still useful, quite simply there was no way to queue up and beat the current content the day it was released no matter skill level, something that is overlooked a lot in these discussions, how many of the "raiders" only did DS LFR once and then unsubdued due to having beat the expansion or just didn't go there again.

Having a goal to strive towards pushing you to be better and overcome the challenge you currently are working for makes for far better content than plowing through the same content over and over with no challenge at all.

You misunderstand me, I'm not trying to deny anyone content for the time/commitment they want to put in to the game which is why I say Blizzard should add more content types that cater to the various amounts of player types instead of pushing everyone towards raiding. Also, wanting rewards that shows of your accomplishments has nothing to do with making it unreachable to most people, everyone have the same opportunity to get the top end rewards, if they choose to go for them or not is up to them. Giving the special rewards to everyone makes them not be special any more, for rewards to be special there has to be limited supply.

Not nerfing heroics would solve a lot of the issues I have with the current way raiding is being done, something you agreed with

They are not giving special rewards to everyone. I dont know why so many people are so worried about the rewards other get. This never happened in gaming before wow, people playing a game in its hard setting never worried about other people getting the same reward by playing the game in an easier setting, let alone a worse reward like people are getting now in WoW.

This entitlement people have that they should have exclusive content and gear made only for them and that other people should not even have a chance of getting is something bad for gaming and i hope it doesnt grow.

I think most people would agree in not nerfing Heroic raids at least when they are current (and probably agree in not nerfing them ever). I still dont get why Blizzard insists on doing it, which numbers they are seeing to do it. Not to maintain a exclusivity in reward, but to maintain a challenge for those that seek it.